For the past few years, I’ve celebrated December by reflecting on what I saw, what I shared, the places I was invited to, and what I created throughout the year. I like to look back, remember the lessons I’ve learned and revisit the good times before starting a new cycle. So here we go once more:
–Jamaica, L.A. & Washington D.C.–
2025 was a fund and extreme year. I spent the first few days of the year on the warm beaches of Jamaica trying to escape the cold of New York. News were just around the corner, waiting for me to kick off a busy year…
Just a few days into the 2025 large areas around L.A. went into flames, we did a few stories around it including this story looking at critical 24 hours of emergency there. I did so many maps and visualizations for it that I even made an entry on my blog about it, scroll down and click the “load more” button until you reach entry number 10 to see some animations and aircraft visualizations like the one above.
January also saw another emergency when an American Airlines plane crashed with a military helicopter. I jumped in with some quick maps and reporting alongside my colleagues. Life sometimes is ironic, after starting this way the year, I think this was one of the years where I travel the most both locally and internationally. Luckily for me I did not got exposed to any dangerous situation… not even turbulence.
–Gaining momentum in NYC–
Being the shortest month, February really flies by!
I spend most of the month planning projects and looking close to a range of things like data centers, the role of AI, the transformations in the battle fronts in Ukraine and even patterns in the butterflies populations. I don’t feel totally safe sharing a screenshot of my calendar, but it’s crazy to look back and see the many diverse meetings I had in February to chat about these and some other projects.
The dragon above (Víbra)
This year I wrapped out my second year of my Sunday sketching exercise. That was a fun project for fun I did every Sunday, but after getting myself into way too many things I paused for a while after finishing it last summer. The image above belongs to week 87 of the project!!! (35 of the second cycle). The plan is to bring it back once I finish a few other fun projects that I’m cooking.
February might looks a little empty here, but it was super intense too. The first things I published in March (first story the 3rd) was all made through this intense a diverse planning in February.
It’s kind of funny to look back and remember moments by looking an old calendar. Give it try!
February was also the start of planning an SND project that I thought I could easily get off the ground; however, the initiative to create the SND mentoring program took me a few more months, as you will see later here.
–War, Butterflies, city spheres, Artificial Intelligence & Boston–
March was the month to collect the harvest. Just 3 days into March I published this story showing how the front lines in Ukraine changed with the intensification of drones as a main weapon. Drones have taken land, air and sea as main drivers of fight, so we used testimonials, maps, illustrations, videos, photos and more all packed into a tight piece in collaboration with the International desk. I work a lot with them, not just because of the visual potential in these stories but because of the smooth relationship to create pieces together.
Just 3 days after that war story, I did a little collaboration looking at butterflies and how their populations are declining or proliferating (spoiler, mostly declining). The project was super fun, but I did not had the chance to do all the stuff I wanted to do since a source provided a ton of good material.
In March I also published a personal little project to my carto blog, funtography. The ideas was simple, grab a piece of a city and make it its own little planet. Each sphere is a sample of about 80 km2 of various datasets. I choose a few cities with some particular meaning to me and render out a few of these just for fun:
After all, what’s life if you need to be serious and narrow your focus to work only. Take a look to entry 11 of my maps blog to learn more about that project.
After the war and butterflies stories went out, a week later the piece about artificial intelligence was also published. I used a bunch of different techniques to explain how the surge of A.I. changed data centers and many other things around. This story includes hand-drawn maps that I made frame by frame to create a spinning globe in combination with some video assets. I also used animated gifs to explain computer processing, diagrams like the one above to show readers how the data centers are also changing and a few other things there too. It was a fun story to produce, take a look if you have time for a fun experience: How A.I. Is Changing the Way the World Builds Computers .
Hello Boston!
In March I also went to Northeastern University in Boston where I shared a little bit with students of design and journalism for a series of talk they do with professionals called IDDV360. I had a good time in Boston earlier this year.
In March I also showed up as guest speaker to a class at the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. I like to share experiences and exchange ideas as much as possible, specially with students.
–Health coverage & SND Minneapolis–
After a crazy busy March, I entered a new project to respond to the measles outbreak in the U.S.
This disease is simply terrible. The effects it has on the human body are devastating, and to make matters worse, children are often highly vulnerable if they don’t receive a vaccine, as is the case for many children in the south of this country.
The piece I did aimed to show how measles attacks the body and that, in many cases, after prolonged suffering, death is common. When I published this piece, there were nearly 700 cases; today, the tracker has doubled that number and continues to report more and more.
Hello Minneapolis!
It’s funny how many times I have visited Minneapolis for different reasons and 2025 was not the exception. The SND annual competition, the board’s in-person meeting and a short workshop was hosted in the QH of the Star Tribune. These trips have many cool things blended. So many friends come together, there’s also the inspiring portion of seeing some of the best pieces of journalism that media produces all over the world over a year, great views of the host city, of course time for museums and social life too. You go back fully reloaded to get back on your own pieces.
–Planning, sketches and virtual tour to Peru–
In May, I pushed to my cartography blog a new entry about the Kerguelen Islands (scroll down to entry number 12), there’s something in the geography of this place that is so appealing for maps, I have seen a lot of good professional cartographers doing great stuff with these islands.
In May, there was another slowdown for planning, some projects materialized, and others were canceled; meanwhile, I virtually presented to students from South America some of the work we do at the Times and how my passion for graphics led me to this company. I feel joy in sharing with students, I would like to travel to South America sometime and do this in person perhaps.
By May I was in week 99 (or 47th of the second cycle) of my sketching project looking at the Qatari “lord of the sea”, the light at the end of the tunnel was almost there!
In May I speak to a class of design from Belgrano University in Argentina. I was nice to see so many students gathering for the presentation, organizers told me that some +100 students joined both in person and virtually.
–Breaking news, military parades, Florida and South Korea –
June was super intense and exiting, one of the first thing I did was a piece showing how regimens use military parades for different purposes, from diplomacy to the show of muscle, to leaders glorification, to acrobatics and pride… all in the eve of a celebration of a new parade in the United States for the first time in a long time.
Then I collaborated in the rush of the breaking news when the U.S. stroked Iran’s facilites, and a follow-up to the damage caused to strategic infrastructures. Just a day or so later, I also contributed to visualize the impact of a bomb into Iran’s Nuclear Facilities and the difficulties around it.
Early in June I also went to Florida to attend the Outlier as speaker where I shared a bit of my career and the stuff I’ve doing in the last 20 years of my life. The organizers recorded the presentation and it’s free to play in youtube now. Take a look below if you have 30min to spare.
No more mythical creatures!
In June I also wrapped out my second year of doodles, a project in which I dedicated every single Sunday for 2 years finally came to a break to re invent. 104 entries later I finally paused this crazy idea posting nonsense illos just to give room to other projects.
I have some plans to retake this into a different shape, if you follow me in social media you might hear about a new crazy idea involving illustrations soon.
Hello Seoul!
After I finished my silly illustrations cycle, published a few pieces on the news, did a conference in Florida, visited the Little Habana and celebrated some birthdays with my family, I packed my bags for an assignment in South Korea. That was my first time in Seoul, I got the chance to meet almost all the colleagues working at the NYT Korean Bureau and prepared myself to explore the place, learn from the team and enjoy Seoul.
While I was in South Korea, I started one more personal project, like if I had a lot of free time to divide my attention… I was waiting for my colleague Pablo to come over to the parking lot in the office and started to sketch passing by people, really quick. Then I thought, hey… would be nice if I do this in every city I have been this year? A quick sketch, probably imperfect, but just to remember fragments of my travels and special moments. I’ve done several, but time has caught up with me… In some places, I couldn’t sit down to get out my sketchbook.
Perhaps I’ll try to finish my 2025 travel journal in the last days of December, although it wasn’t the original idea to do them while I was there. Maybe next year, hehe.
–Seoul & Hong Kong–
During July I continued to prepare stuff for future projects, but I did a quick map and a series of little illustrations to compare the Chinese aircraft carriers with some of the biggest warships from other countries. This due to the increase of the Chinese activity in the Pacific waters near strategic U.S. and allies bases.
Hello again HK!
During my assignment in South Korea in July, I took a weekend trip to Hong Kong to visit friends. I had left the city more than six years before, but it was wonderful to return: the sounds of the traffic lights, the trams, the subway announcements, people speaking Cantonese… Everything was so familiar and pleasant that it brought back so many good memories.
After my short visit to Hong Kong I returned to finish my work in South Korea, but I went back so nostalgic. I visited my old neighborhood, took the same ferry I used to take every day, saw old friends in the same spots we used to visit regularly… I guess the nostalgia came to me because when I left the city in my head it would be so difficult to comeback that it was never a real opportunity or idea in my head… and suddenly I was there again! ❤️
–The weather and a little summer break–
In August I finally published this piece we delayed for so long… Many reasons hold the piece, but it was meant to explain the vast symphony of instruments necessary to get you the forecast in your phone using some 3D animations, audio and data into a swipe story format.
I think that one of the most important assets of the meteorological industry is the people behind all these instruments, the scientists who have dedicated their lives to processing data and providing information that makes it possible to know when it’s going to rain, as well as the extreme weather alerts that save millions of lives.
In August I also contributed with my colleagues of International to put together a piece explaining why it was so difficult to asses the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear facilities after the U.S. attacks. Fordo is a facility burred depth into the heart of a mountain, very little was known about the facilities it self so it’s hard to tell if the bombing of it was efficient or not.
Then summer arrived. My son has very little time to completely disconnect from his responsibilities, so at the end of August I took the opportunity to go on a short trip 100% dedicated to history (he’s a huge history buff). It was great spending a few days exploring historical sites and thinking only about what would be good to eat in Europe.
–Ukraine & Costa Rica–
During September I turned back my attention to the war in Ukraine, I partnered with Thomas Gibbons-Neff to do a piece looking at how tanks are changing in due to the extensive use of drones. I did a backstage story here to look at the process behind and a little bit of the context if you want to review it once more.
September is also the month to celebrate of my natal country, along with many other countries in Latam, Costa Rica celebrates it’s independence of Spain in September 15, since I’m far away from my land, I did a little map in my blog. Look at entry 13 for the full version of it.
–Washington D.C. and giving back to the community–
In October things got crazy with a few projects, mostly in response to the renovations in the White House. This was part of a large project we spent some time working on, but with the rush of the news and the demolition of the east wing, the project broke apart into smaller pieces.
The first was a highlight to 5 major renovations of the White House. Then some notes on the envisions of Mr. Trump after the demolition of the east wing, and finally one more looking at the evolution of the plans the White House presented for the future of the east wing.
Since my work responds to whatever is in the news, sometimes I have to do stuff related to politics. But as I state in my NYT byline page, I don’t participate in any political parties in the United States or abroad, and I choose to remain neutral on political matters.
September 2025 was also important for my alter-ego personality, I joined the SND Board of Directors with one mission in my head only. Help others involved in areas like news, arts, design and communication and narrow the distance between students and professionals around the world in those areas.
One way of doing it was to push an idea through the SND to create a free mentorship program with Universities in North and South America, Asia, Europe and more. The initiative officially launched in Nov. 2025, but we will see results until next year.
I hope this program can keep going for many years more to reach as many people as possible. Learn more about it on SND’s website at snd.org/join-the-snd-challenge/
In October I did 2 presentations for students, one virtually as guest speaker to ‘Semana del Diseño’ from the Peruvian University of Sciences (UPC), by invitation of UPC school of Design. Then a second session in person here in New York to a Datavis class at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
–sky, water, maps–
November started with news from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration responding to the Government shutdown and preparing the people for delays and cancelations across the U.S., I spend a few days preparing data updating maps and sketching ideas to react to the event. Eventually another project pull off from the effort but my colleagues continued to update the story for about a week, some days even with updates in the morning and in the afternoon.
A bunch of colleague and I jumped into the most rushed project I have worked this year so far.
Earlier this year, while I was on assignment in Korea, I collaborated to a breaking news piece looking at the flash flood that killed several in a camp site in Texas. After that, some of my colleagues continued to look into data simulating the water levels of that night.
However, the rush begun when the lawyers send a heads-up to the Times saying they were suing the camp for what happened there. Basically we talk to both sides and got access to exclusive information with way details that we know before. All of this under one condition, whatever we publish, we have only 5 days to do it before all the material become public.
In such a rush, a few of us rushed to the camp to fly drones collecting lidar to create a 3D model of Camp Mystic, take photos, do interviews, process data, create animations, maps and setting everything that usually would take minimum a month.
It was a tremendous effort from my colleagues, I helped a little bit putting together pieces and helping construct the narrative, I think now days my roll is less and less in the heavy production and more into the support of others helping with concepts. You can take a look to the piece here.
November was also the moth for the map challenge, yeah one more challenge, why not?
I was in the mood to do the whole challenge following the prompts they publish earlier. However, things rarely go as planned. My own curiosity and procrastination caused my to derail from the goal, and projects like the Texas flood reconstruct added the final stone to the idea. You can read a little about me setting obstructions to this idea in one of my infofails post here.
Anyway I managed to do a few maps to join the celebrations. Of course, not on time nor the whole series. I like the one about aircraft because it has additional context, not just a map, but a little story behind. You can read about it in my mapping blog here, just look for entry number 16.
Some other maps like the one of Myanmar’s political violence also made it, that one was in the highlights of Datawrapper’s Dispatch. It was nice to see it there because even tho the whole thing did not ended up like I wanted to, some people appreciated the few pieces I managed to do.
November was heavily packed. In the last week of November we published one more piece looking at the situation of one the city’s biggest headaches, the Cantilever section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It’s a section of road carrying 130,000 vehicles every day, today is 70-years-old, it’s falling apart and to this date (Nov. 30, 2025) there’s no consensus on how to fit it.
The piece is full of 3D renderings, maps, video, photo and illustrations, but one of the things that I enjoyed the most was to conduct a visual survey of the piece. We rented a car and drove up and down in the crumbling structure to document with 360 footage every single patch that the city has installed to prevent pieces of the cantilever to fall on top of passing-by vehicles. It was almost like our own version of google street view but way more detailed and in crazy high resolution. You can see a glimpse of the 3d footage in this promo video we did.
In November I jumped into the scenario once more for a live interview with Reuters reporter Ben Welsh. The interview went around our practices in journalism, trust in data, collaborative reporting and a touch of the surge in artificial intelligence. The event was organized by the School of Visual Arts, SVA in the frame of the launch of their new Data Visualization and Communication program. Here’s a recording of the interview:
Students, Rhythm and Ballrooms
December kicked off with a talk to a class from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York (CUNY) hosted by The New York Times. It’s nice to wrap-up the year with one more session for students.
This month I’m adding a new section to my website, I’m adding little stories with interactive features, some animations and touches of humor. It’s like a playground to me where I want to put stuff I found interesting about random things. You can dive in with me into some slightly nerdy topics on my website; this month I’ve prepared a story about sounds and rhythm.
Before the year ended, discussions about White House renovations resurfaced. The first of the month concerned the details of the ballroom renovation plan, after the president announced he would change the architectural firm in charge following constant disagreements.
You can take a look to some 3D models we did here to show the latest know about the multi-million project of the Trump administration for the White House.
In the next few days we will be publishing one last story to close out the year and get some rest. Meanwhile, I wish you all the best in this new beginning and a productive and prosperous 2026!
…see you in 2026, ho ho ho.
Some collections along the same line:
- mhinfographics: 2024: The Year in Graphics
- mhinfographics: 2023: The Year in Graphics
- mhinfographics: 2022: My Year in Graphics.
- mhinfographics: My fav little details of 2021 on Reuters.
- mhinfographics: 2020 in graphics: My favourite little details.
- mhinfographics: 2019: My sincere gratitude to the South China Morning Post.
— - The New York Times: 2024: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics.
- The New York Times: 2023: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics.
- The New York Times: 2022: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics.
- Reuters: 2020 – The year in graphics.
- South China Morning Post: 2018 in visuals.
Marco Hernandez 